'Happy Endings': A good word for a dying TV show

Whatever it is, until the other day I worried: Could I find the words to honor “Happy Endings”?

Do I call it a “good show”? A “kind show”?

Do I write a bittersweet mash note to a low-rated ABC sitcom almost certainly about to die? Offer it broadly and generously as the simple story of six Chicago friends insulated by their friendship? Do I suggest that it was unfairly treated and, in another time, under the right conditions, things might have turned out differently?

It would be a lie.

If you haven't seen “Happy Endings” (and most of you never have), any description that flat and lifeless would suggest a warmed-over “Friends” or neutered “Seinfeld,” or any number of TV friend-coms. It would do a disservice to the feverish John Waters-esque, coked-up prattle of the characters on “Happy Endings,” which was created by North Shore native David Caspe and partly written by the Brothers Libman, Matthew and Daniel, two of Caspe's old friends from Glencoe (Caspe and Matthew Libman attended New Trier High School together).

It would also fail to convey this: As much as we like to think TV is as verbal a medium as film is visual, shows that honor language — the ones that rant in wild, abstract, delirious tongues — usually translate into the smallest audiences. A show like “Happy Endings,” more about words than friends, was born endangered.

But “Seinfeld” … you say?

The Halley's comet of language-obsessed sitcoms, I say. The one exception that unfairly suggests there's room for a second. “Happy Endings” has been on ABC for three seasons, and, as with “30 Rock” (years of low ratings), “Community” (years of low ratings, continually in danger of cancellation) and “Arrested Development” (years of low ratings, then cancellation — though it is being revived next month on Netflix, where ratings appear to hold less sway), its delight in language and the sound of careening syllables has meant …

Low ratings.

So, though you may not watch “Happy Endings,” here's why you should care about its fate: Any show with language as go-for-broke baroque as this captures The Way We Sound Now, even if we haven't realized it yet.

Just ask Danny Pudi, who plays Abed on “Community” (and grew up in Brighton Park and Jefferson Park). “The truth is, we do speak in code. We tuck inside jokes inside inside jokes,” he told me. “On (‘Community') we say things that have no meaning outside of ‘Community.' We had a character named Paradox with one line: ‘I agree to disagree.' A show like that, it will always be on the bubble. It's too personal, too real about the way people sound when they're talking to each other. So, sure, there is solidarity with ‘Happy Endings.' We both know at any point we could be gone. You cannot put us on in the background and still feel included.”

Indeed, the website TV by the Numbers, which maintains a frank assessment of the fortunes of TV series, recently described the chance of a fourth-season renewal of “Happy Endings” as “overwhelmingly bleak.”

Prognosis? Dead by May.

I spoke recently with Caspe and the Libmans about the unpromising future of their abrasively verbal oddity. But the day before, I spotted this: A commercial for “Happy Endings” — which started on Wednesdays after “Modern Family,” then moved to Tuesdays, then Sundays — that screamed that the show was about to jump to Fridays. Which meant certain death. Though that in itself wasn't remarkable — troubled shows be troubled.

Far more remarkable: ABC was also imploring viewers, in big red letters slapped over a montage of clips, to “Save ‘Happy Endings.'” Meaning, the usual viewer-led campaign urging a network to give a smart but stumbling show a chance was being co-opted by the network that, barring a Nielsen miracle, would cancel the show.